Bergentrückung
by AncalagonAidoni
Summary: The higher you soar, the further you must fall. A series of one-shots depicting how each of Wraeclast's gods fell - first into corruption, and then into sleep, and finally, at the end of it all, into death.
1. On Eagle's Wings

She didn't understand how he could be so devoid of ambition. They were legends, monarchs - living gods, deities over mankind! They ruled over beings too powerless and flawed to govern themselves - a kindness to mortals, a favor given for nothing but adoration and praise.

What wasn't theirs for the taking? Nothing, she assured herself. But when she told him, he refused to meet her eyes.

"Not so, my love," he'd murmur in that quiet voice of his. "Remember your beginnings."

Beginnings? She didn't understand. She had always been a goddess. Right?

_Of course I have._ She dismissed her husband's words.

He must have seen the confusion in her eyes, because he froze, just for a moment, then turned away.

* * *

She was the ruler of the firmament. What was not to be proud of? She was beautiful and beloved, permanent perfection.

She never felt her end approach.

Silent, sadistic, Nightmare's corruption overpowered her easily. She had no time to scream, but she realized what was happening - she had always been proud of her sky, but never a tyrant - until Nightmare had conquered her.

Her mind didn't last long enough for her to apologize to the one she had not realized was trying to save her until it was far, _far_ too late.

* * *

She smirked, proud of her skyborn empire. _I don't know why I ever thought I needed him. He only ever wanted me to be weak - a delicate flower rather than a fearless warrior-queen!_

She believed herself entirely. Nightmare had taken the Queen of the Winds, and it would not easily release her.

And then, with neither fanfare nor warning, she fell asleep.

And from that sleep, Garukhan awoke, released from the chains of her caged and enslaved mind, and - for the first time in centuries - she laughed with joy. "Whatever this sleep is," she cried, "I am free! Maybe I am no longer able to act, but I can think freely!"

With that, she did something she had never done, for one reason or another.

_I'm so sorry, my love._

* * *

Eons later, a band of seven managed to defeat the Thaumaturge Laureate.

Barely a moment later, ancient immortals escaped a near-infinite sleep.

Nightmare-Garukhan had barely opened her eyes before she was in the sky. She did not look back, only rode the wind to her shrine.

It was gone.

The walls of her temple, too - she stared, enraged, before calling winds to carve her holy symbols into where her altar had been.

Minutes later, she had a shrine and engraved walls. It was but nothing to a goddess, but it would suffice - she had the whole of the sky, after all.

All she needed now was a priestess. A Maraketh warrior priestess would be preferable -

_There_, she thought, _she will do._

She called to the woman with her mind, employing psionic suggestion to 'convince' her to submit.

_Come to me._

The mortal's mind never stood a chance, Nightmare-Garukhan knew.

_Come, Kira. Bring your _sekhema _and come to me. You are my chosen, _dekhara.

_Yes, my lady,_ Kira's mind surrendered.

_Good, my priestess. Bow before me, for I am Garukhan._

* * *

A few months later, goddess and priestess fought against blade and bow, against sword and spell, against flame and frost.

The goddess could not understand how these mortals were not dying, or even simply bowing. She was a goddess! She had power, respect! She was immortal, invincible!

She was Garukhan, she told herself. She knew she was. So why didn't it feel true?

Her steps slowed, uncertain.

And in that moment, the assassin's blade pierced her blackened heart.

Nightmare faded first, disappointed with a host who had proved herself weak.

In Garukhan's last moment, only one thought sparked to life.

_Thank you…_


	2. In All My Dreams I Drown

The one thing Princess Shakari had known since she was a little girl was that she wanted to be just like her skyborn mother, Garukhan.

Garukhan, Shakari knew, was perfect. A beautiful Queen of the Winds, an immortal Goddess of the skies, a powerful warrior-woman of the desert

Shakari aspired to be just like that. Just as pretty, just as eternal, just as _inspirational_ as Queen Garukhan.

That goal was the princess' foundation, the cornerstone of her life. But she only saw Garukhan from far away, as an outsider. And from that distance, one would see only perfection when regarding the Queen of the Winds.

Shakari only learned that her mother was imperfect when everything changed. She would always remember that day, with the crystalline clarity of a mountain lake. While Shakari had not been there, her imagination could fill in the details.

To the south lay a prosperous Maraketh city - Sekhoyu, or Highgate. A tornado had formed, bearing down on helpless Sekhoyu from the direction of the mountain, and Garukhan, great protector that she was, had gone to destroy the cyclonic storm.

She had not returned.

Someone who _looked_ like Garukhan, who had Garukhan's powers, who _sounded_ like Garukhan, and who acted a little like Garukhan, but was not at all Garukhan had come in her place, and the… other… - for Shakari would not dare to call this pale shadow of the Queen of the Winds Garukhan - had ruined everything.

The… reflection… was more powerful than Garukhan, and shone with an alien beauty so unlike the true monarch of the air. The reflection was ageless, but it wasn't Garukhan. The true sky goddess, while proud, was a benevolent guardian, on the whole. The false Garukhan?

It, or she, the princess did not know, was a cruel dictator.

What Shakari did know was that the reflection was a bringer of ruin. It sought power, persecuted love, and undid all that Garukhan had done.

The queen's husband - Shakari's father -could see what had happened. The child goddess could tell. And she, too, knew that the reflection Garukhan was all wrong, despite all that the Prince Consort did to protect his daughter from that knowledge.

Motherless, the girl was drowning in the knowledge that Good Queen Garukhan was lost to the sands of time. She was blinded by innocence and utterly confused - why did her father not simply find the _real_ Garukhan, and bring her back?

Shakari couldn't find an answer.

And as she sorrowed over the loss of her mother, she grew resentful, blaming Sekhoyu for the death of Garukhan.

_Why should their leaders live when my queen could not?!_ She reasoned, enraged.

Yet, young as she was, there was nothing Shakari could do to the Maraketh.

The child, saddened and wounded, learned from her youth to drown her sorrows in anger. Her father loved her, tried desperately to help her - but Shakari could not accept him as a new Garukhan, nor could she see that he was not trying to replace his child's mother.

And while Shakari loved her father, she wanted her mother back.

One wish. One unfulfilled, insatiable wish.

* * *

Resentment changed Shakari.

Before, she had idolized Garukhan, but it had warped into envy… and, eventually, hatred.

The one constant in Shakari's life proved to be her father's overwhelming love - yet not even that could sustain her. The woman's hatred for Garukhan and Highgate only grew. Finally, one day, she left, seeking out a new life elsewhere in the Vastiri desert.

She found it.

The sky, the princess knew, was the largest thing in all the world. So, she asked herself, what was the smallest?

Shakari did not find a definitive answer, but she did find something that was close enough: a single grain of sand.

Shakari, angered by the reflection, desperate for her mother's love, found the perfect revenge: to overcome the sky with the sands of the desert. And so she became the Queen of the Sands, ruler of the black scorpions of the desert, and the bane of Maraketh women.

The Queen of Scorpions would send her servants to kill Maraketh women, again and again, until the killing of the venomous creatures became a rite of passage for the Maraketh.

Regardless, Garukhan's Prince Consort loved his daughter dearly, but Shakari, obsessed with revenge, did not realize this. She only carried on, hateful and empty.

* * *

The Queen of the Sands guarded carefully the vault of her mind, and Nightmare's corruption never touched her.

The Prince Consort thought the Nightmare _had_ taken his beloved daughter, and over and over he reached out to her. Every time, she turned away, intent on her revenge. She gathered a people to herself, and from them raised an army, bent on vengeance.

Inside, Shakari was still a child who wanted her mother, and she would have conquered the world to bring back Queen Garukhan.

And the Prince Consort knew just what Shakari could do to the world. He knew of her wrathful vengeance, her determination fueled by both hate and love; he knew the horrors Shakari could unleash. And believing his daughter lost to madness, he wept for her.

* * *

Shakari did not understand why her father, who loved her, cried. But she could feel it, like a great weight upon her soul.

It hurt.

It _hurt._

This confused Shakari. She was not wounded. Her father was not lost as Garukhan was.

So… _why?!_

If Shakari had ever been mortal, she would have known that the pain of a loved one is oft more excruciating than one's own. But she was a goddess born to the Queen of the Winds, and her equally-immortal husband, and thus Shakari only knew the reality of being divinity. Mortality was incomprehensible to her.

But she cared deeply for the Prince Consort, and wondered how best to aid him.

* * *

The reflection had never deemed Shakari a threat. For that reason, it severely underestimated the Queen of the Sands.

Soldiers, in the privacy of their camps, will speak of plans they are privy to. There are various reasons why: to correct errors in that plan, to rehearse strategy, to express doubts, to relieve boredom. The latter of these may sound strange - but much of war is waiting.

In the end, it did not matter why Shakari heard what she did. The reflection's army tried to never leak information, but they did not realize that the Queen of the Sands heard all that her scorpions did. And within the Vastiri desert, her black Maraketh scorpions could be hiding absolutely anywhere at any time.

And so Shakari learned that the reflection intended to kill the Prince Consort, who Garukhan's daughter dearly loved.

Queen Shakari did not intend to let this happen, and took steps to ensure the Prince Consort's survival. She was not strong enough to kill the reflection, but she could send a message. The difficulty lay in sending that message without making herself seem like a threat to the reflection; she could not defeat the corrupter one on one.

However, Shakari was still the daughter of Garukhan, and she knew her mother's pride, just as she knew all too well that the reflection was so much worse.

So the reflection would deem only one weapon worthy to kill Garukhan's husband: the shapeshifting Storm Blade.

The Storm Blade had not been used in centuries, and unbeknownst to Garukhan or the reflection, Shakari knew where the mystical relic was kept.

She planned her infiltration and escape, and slipped into the Temple of the Sky, leaving without a trace, and with a replica in the Storm Blade's place. It could not transform, but it was magical - Shakari had enchanted it to keep its holder from flight, and to explode if the curse was lifted.

The Queen of the Sands would have preferred something more subtle, but she was running out of time.

The Storm Blade Shakari hid at one of her one monuments; to protect it she handpicked her most reliable generals, and they swore an oath to guard the weapon.

The arrogant reflection believed that only the weak would plan such a theft, and its disdain for the Queen of the Sands grew - but the Storm Blade was the only weapon capable of dismantling the sandstorm Shakari summoned as protection. No one could reach her anymore, not unless she permitted them to. Shakari was safe, even from the influence of Nightmare.

* * *

Or so she thought.

However, she was not blinded by corruption, and so she felt the prickle of foreboding, a chill down her spine, a flash of insight -

Then, nothing. For eons she lay in dreamless sleep; unlike most of her fellow immortals, she was not corrupted and therefore was unaware of all the dreams around her.

She did not feel Garukhan talking with Lunaris, relishing freedom from corruption.

If all of the gods could have met in a dream, then perhaps the executioner's blade would not have consigned her to eternity.

But this was not the case, and so Garukhan's Prince Consort never knew that his daughter had once saved his life.

* * *

Uncorrupted, Shakari woke in the same oasis she had fallen asleep in, and when seven mortals came for her blood, she could feel the essence of the gods upon them and thought them sent by her corrupted peers.

She never knew that the Prince Consort had sent the seven, desperately trying to release her from the Nightmare she was not caged by.

In her last moments, as the sword fell, she sent a telepathic call to the one who had always cared for her.

_Father, I love you._

_I'm sorry I couldn't save Mother._

* * *

**Sorry this took so long, my computer broke. It's… half-fixed now?**


	3. Fairest of All, Part 1

Within his study, a man gritted his teeth and re-carved the runes on the mirror frame he held in his work-calloused hands for the seventy-eighth time that day.

He checked the mana-infused scratches, and again found no error. "It should be right," he mumbled, fiddling with his silver carving tools in a fruitless attempt to return them to the box they'd fit in when he had bought them. "All my theory agrees it ought to be right. What am I missing?"

The mirror was supposed to reflect the essence of humanity, to answer the question Vaal scholars had been asking since the dawn of their civilization.

The Architect of Reflections carefully lay down his life's work on the desk beside him, and arranged the tools for easy access later. He scratched a few notes down on parchment — _perhaps distilling from a divine vessel into the thaumaturgic infusion of the runes would supply the mirror with the necessary energy to form a connection with the image created._ The thought process was starting to break apart, lose coherency, he really should stop for the day — but he couldn't, he was _so close_, if only —

The massive gong at the center of the Temple of Atzoatl sounded, indicating the sun was rising, and the Architect half-fell, half-leapt from his seat, caught off guard.

He bumped into his work table, and the priceless mirror skidded away — he reached for it desperately, tried to catch it —

The mirror — once beautiful, now less so from the scratches of runes upon runes — hit the ground, and shattered before the panicked Architect's eyes.

For a moment, he couldn't think, couldn't move. This was his life's work, the answer to one of the most perplexing questions his mighty civilization had, as of yet, failed to answer.

And, _of course,_ he'd managed to break it with his clumsiness.

But the next moment, magic rippled throughout the study, and the Architect of Reflections approached warily.

There could be no doubt: the thaumaturgical energy was originating from the shattered mirror. The runes were flaring with a color no being had ever seen before.

* * *

Years later, when other Vaal Architects were able to replicate the strange not-light, they would agree it resembled pure darkness, and incorporate it into a seal meant to protect one of the greatest catacombs of their civilization. The Seal would be the only one of its ilk, the only successful harnessing of the strange energy, and all but indestructible.

* * *

The Architect crouched over his splintered project, transfixed. Of _course_ the mirror wasn't reflecting the essence of humanity, the way it was supposed to — the mirror's magic was trapped within it! He had attempted to design the object to emit its magic through its face, but that kind of passive enchantment, always active, always reflecting, would never work. There simply wasn't a way to store enough power within that it would last forever — he saw that now, it was so _obvious_ in retrospect.

Given the intensity of the runes he was using, he would be surprised if he could enable a mirror with a passive enchantment to run for more than a few moments. An enchantment designed to activate under certain conditions would not work either — the sudden release of such power would cause one of two things. Either the power would simply dissipate, or, more likely, the mirror would explode with sufficient force to kill or severely maim anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the blast. The radius and strength of the resulting explosion would be sufficient to level the entire temple in which he now stood, if the mirror was positioned in the center of the grand building.

That kind of power "simply dissipating" could have disastrous results. According to the Architect's calculations, there was only a 3.768% chance that activating a non-passive enchantment would not have a negative impact.

But he had never considered breaking the mirror. If he could find people to look into the mirror as he smashed it, and then somehow bottle the power released, create a viewing device to inspect the shards… perhaps he could piece together an impression of what the mirror had revealed.

He should probably write this down. He blinked, realizing it was all dark in the temple, and when had that happened? He couldn't write in this darkness.

"Yugul!"

The Architect of Reflections jumped, again, before shaking his head to clear it — _focus, calm down, you aren't an Architect for nothing _—and going to the door of the study and poking his head out.

"Yugul, are you alright?"

"Huh?" Really, that was the best he could do? He may have been chosen as a Temple Architect only recently, but he had been chosen. He could do better than questioning noises. The man reorganized his thoughts and fought to identify the voice. "Zalatl? Zalatl. Um. Yes. I'm fine, why?"

The Architect of Thaumaturgy, one of Yugul's closest friends, turned the last corner and stared at the enchanter. "Did you not notice that _every light in the temple went out?!_ The candles were blown out, the sacrificial altar fires snuffed into smoke. I wanted to make sure you were alright — mirrors need something to reflect, after all; I thought you'd be panicking."

"_Every_ fire?" Yugul did a double-take. "Was Topotante experimenting with his Tempests again?"

Zalatl gave him a strange look. "Topotante always leaves just after nightfall. How distracted _were_ you, Yugul?"

The Architect of Reflections lit up. "I'm glad you asked — I think I've had a breakthrough! You see, what I was missing was —"

Zalatl held up one hand, and Yugul stopped. "I know you're excited, but now isn't the time. We need to find out what happened. We're lucky Xipocado isn't here. After the incident last week with Zilquapa somehow managing to fill the Temple with _portals_ and turn half the city's infrastructure into _explosive jade,_ we can't afford another mess. Even Estazunti's hoard is starting to look shabby."

The Architect of Thaumaturgy had a point. "The lights went out," Yugul recited. "Did you see anything strange, or feel anything? You can detect magical stimuli even more accurately than Xopec can, you must have seen something."

"Xopec is a paranoid old fool," Zalatl scoffed, waving one hand dismissively. "But I did see something you could say was… dark purple, I suppose? Yet it wasn't normal magic. It didn't activate any of my sensors."

"Dark purple —" Yugul sprinted to his shattered mirror. The puzzle was coming together. "That… might have been me. Well, my mirror, I guess. It shattered, and I saw strange things. I felt… like I could do anything, learn any truth, uncover any secret."

"_You_ did that?! Yugul, that's ridiculous! You can't reliably manipulate fire magic to save your life, let alone —"

"But it wasn't fire magic. You said yourself it wasn't _any_ kind of magic, or at least not a kind you've seen before. It was…" the Architect of Reflections fought for an apt description, "pure darkness. Like the essence of a shadow. I didn't even think it was real until you said you saw purple. It was anti-light – of course it would put out candles. I'm not sure how it affected the entire temple, but —"

Zalatl sighed. "Yugul," he began, resigned, "this is why the twins have been telling you to get more sleep."

"A few moons ago, you were telling me I was sleeping too much!"

"You were! Half the time you walk around like you're still asleep – but then times like now, you have _ingenious_ ideas that leave even Quipolatl wondering how you made this or that intuitive leap. You take senseless risks and you don't seem capable of comprehending the idea that things could go wrong and _you never sleep!_"

"But I can't! I'm almost there, if I can just figure out this one last thing then I —" Why couldn't Zalatl _understand?!_ Yugul was close, _so close_, he could feel it —

"You always say that, Yugul. Then there's another thing. And another. And four days later you haven't slept and —"

"That only happened the one time!"

"Yes, and that was also the time Zilquapa managed to somehow contact someone from the future and give her precise instructions on how to reach a quarter of the rooms in the temple. In _the present day,_" Zalatl stressed, "creating time travel."

"That wasn't my fault! I don't how time travel works! Blame Opiloti, he's the one with the monoliths," Yugul rebutted. "Besides, it was coincidence that happened at the same time."

"I'm not blaming anyone, Yugul, but you have to admit, things tend to go sideways when you don't sleep," Zalatl sternly pointed out. "In fact, quite a few of our coworkers have mentioned you helping them with some experiment or another during those all-nighters you pull."

"Well, yes," Yugul admitted, "but I can't sleep anyway, so I might as well help out. And they usually don't go wrong! Or at least not _that_ wrong. And Zilquapa's time travel experiment I wasn't involved in. _That_ one wasn't my fault."

"Something not being your fault should be normal, not the exception to prove the rule," Zalatl countered. "The twins think you are manipulating probabilities with magic, you know."

"What? That's ridiculous. That entire 'school' of magical practice is pure theory. And if I could manipulate outcomes I'd have worked on that three-point-seven-six-eight percent chance," Yugul pointed out. "Actually – I wonder if that's how Zilquapa did the time travel thing – utilizing a probability nexus to make something with a zero percent chance of happening possible. Wait, no, that can't be it. Zilquapa is terrified of Quipolatl."

"See, Yugul, _these_ are the kinds of intuitive leaps we can't follow. But we're way off topic – we need to decide what to tell the others. Puhuarte's going to be furious when he arrives – his forge isn't burning. Whatever you did snuffed out the entire Crucible."

Anxiety prickled under Yugul's skin. He had to get back to work. If he did, if he could just map the enchantments for new mirrors, maybe talk to Opiloti to find a way to freeze moments, then he'd succeed. This was it. He knew what to do. If he could just get to work, then this time, it'd all go according to plan. Less than a moon, if he could just keep working, keep going, then he'd find the answer to the question he'd been asking for years –

"_Yugul!_"

The Architect of Reflections jumped. "Huh? What's going on?!"

Zalatl was still there, looked stressed and frustrated and disorganized, which was the opposite of how things should be – Zalatl was supposed to be calm and collected, and he could fix any mistake, and Yugul probably would have forgotten to eat and died of starvation years ago if his friend wasn't frequently reminding him that food was a necessity. "Have you been listening at all?"

Yugul thought about that – he had no idea what Zalatl had been saying while he had been chasing down his chain of thought. "No. Sorry. Can I work on my mirrors? I really think I've got it this time."

The Architect of Thaumaturgy shot Yugul a flat look. "No. You can work on your sleep."

"But what about the fires going out?" Yugul honestly didn't care much about some unlit candles, but if he wasn't allowed to work on his mirrors, helping Zalatl was preferable to lying in bed awake for hours and hours on end.

"Quatazodo is incompetent at this point. I'll blame him, and everyone will breathe a sigh of relief when Guatelitzi uses him for one of those horrific experiments. Everyone's happy," Zalatl grinned. "And he'll be _gone_, which can only mean good things. Xipocado might even let us have a party."

The Architect of Reflections, if he had been listening, would have argued against this, but instead he was fiddling with his tools, trying and failing to get them to fit in their case.

"Yugul, I told you to _get some sleep!_"

* * *

The next day, Yugul held a mirror with only one set of carved runes. Around him, runes in the floor, built to contain magic, pulsed with eerie scarlet light.

He looked into the mirror's depths, and quite deliberately smashed the thing, never moving his eyes from its reflective surface.

The runes kept the lights from going out, and for just a moment, Yugul saw visions of strange and wonderful things, and felt light and free — he had succeeded.

A servant walking past saw the wide, victorious smile that spread across the Architect of Reflections' face. She did not sleep soundly for days.

* * *

Half a moon later, give or take a few days, Zalatl made his daily rounds, as he had without fail since he was first chosen. He consistently checked up on everyone, and wasn't above admitting it was at least in part because if one of his co-workers had a temper tantrum, his more delicate experiments would have to be restarted, one particularly fussy concoction for the thirty-third time. At least Matatl was willing to buy the failed attempts — apparently, they made excellent traps. Failing that, Hayoxi was always looking for something else to blow up.

Zalatl rubbed at the bridge of his nose. His coworkers were crazy.

According to Doryani, genius and madness went hand in hand, and were oft confused. Zalatl was less than sure he believed that absolutely, but it wouldn't do to lose all funding for his projects because he didn't pay enough lip service to the queen's favorite.

Zalatl went to check on Yugul, following the familiar pathways of the Temple of Atzoatl, and wincing at Tzamoto's hysterical cackles. The Architect of Torments' twin, Zantipi, was far more reasonable. He turned the same corner he had on the night the lights had all vanished, though less panicked and thus less hastily, walked past the mural of a long-dead and well-respected Architect (Azcatazotl, Architect of Duality), and peered into the Architect of Reflections' study.

Yugul was asleep, head resting on his arms, slumped over his desk.

Zalatl felt his breath leave his lungs, and as quietly as he could, slipped inside, organized Yugul's notes chronologically, carefully fit every one of the carving tools on the desk into their case, and left, closing the door behind him, making a mental note to check back in on Yugul before dusk.

This was one of Yugul's bad days. It seemed counter-intuitive that Yugul's successes could spark these downward spirals, but Zalatl was used to it by now. He knew how to help his best friend even when the Architect of Reflection didn't want to be helped, and how to lift his coworkers' spirits when Yugul couldn't.

Because, for all the other Vaal Architects pretended to look down on their more recently chosen coworkers, Yugul was like a ray of sunshine and some of the other Architects (Tzamoto, Xopec, Guatelitzi, _Quatazodo_) did not deserve him. When Yugul entered the break room, arguments tended to settle; spirits tended to lift; even the grumpiest among them typically found reason to laugh.

But not on the bad days. Zalatl knew from bitter experience that Yugul's bad days rolled an oppressive fog over the temple. People would find reason to head home earlier than usual, and things remained somber without Yugul's kindness and good humor.

At least they'd stopped asking Zalatl (or worse, Yugul himself) why the Architect of Reflections was so upset. The Architect of Thaumaturgy had taken great pleasure in violently dismembering the poor fool who had last asked.

Architects murdering each other wasn't uncommon, but rarely did they do so quite as blatantly as Zalatl had.

Zalatl prided himself on refusing to stand for any idiocy. He felt it was best quality.

* * *

One moon after his success, Yugul woke up to Uromoti shaking him gently.

The exhausted Architect looked up at the Architect of Expansions, glazed eyes watering. "Huh?"

Uromoti tended to be the introverted sort, if only because no one ever really understood what he was talking about.

"Close your eyes," Uromoti said. His voice was dreamy. Then again, that was usual for Uromoti.

Yugul did as directed.

"No, not like that. Dusk falls. Despair drives you to look. Don't listen. Close your eyes and don't listen."

"I don't understand, Uromoti," Yugul mumbled.

"Do not understand. It will break the light. Don't call the dawn. It will come to you."

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't dream. Sometimes it's a lie. Close your eyes but don't sleep. Remain vigilant. You are not a reflection of yourself."

"Wait —"

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Keep on searching, and you'll fall. What do you see, in the mirror? Not your darkness, spreading nearer."

* * *

**So… I came back to this only to return months later with part one of a two-shot, because apparently my brain decided that **_**this**_** was the **_**perfect**_** thing to return with. I also renamed this story, and many of my original ideas were scrapped, but here's "Fairest of All." Part one. Part two hopefully coming soon.**

**It's also possible that not every chapter will cover every aspect of what's outlined in the description. I felt I needed to provide some backstory on Yugul, but I'm not entirely sure how I'll cover him falling asleep. I may not — it simply might not work in the context of this particular Yugul. I'd like to clarify here that, at the time this chapter occurs, Yugul is not a god, and he has no aspirations of godhood.**

**28 June 2020: Edited. Some things were clarified or rephrased.**


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